If The Warmth of Other Suns Is Too Long…Just Listen

September 27, 2013

I spent the last part of summer listening to The Warmth of Other Suns. I was preparing for a book discussion I was moderating at the Renaissance Adult Day Services Center in Chatham. Before this experience I was one of those people who only wanted to support the actual written word. No eReaders and who wants to listen to books on tape or CD? I want to curl up in my bed with an ACTUAL book (well, until I got my Kindle).

Then I was given the task of reading Isabel Wilkerson's 622-page book about the Great Migration of African Americans leaving the South for better opportunities in the North. I only had three weeks to complete the book so I put all judgments aside and decided to try the audiobook CD. I listened to one disc each evening before I went to bed (a total of 19 discs) and I think I enjoyed it more than if I had just read the book.

Robin Mead reads Wilkerson's writing with the finesse of a great storyteller even changing her voice slightly for each interpretation of Wilkerson's three main travelers Robert Pershing Foster, Ida Mae Gladney, and George Starling. I got to experience listening to the stories of one of the most significant times in American history while at the same time exposing myself to a new form of "reading." Now if only working out could be that easy!